


deserted terrace of cloud and rain

by paperiuni



Category: Chì bì | Red Cliff (2008), Sān guó yǎn yì | Romance of the Three Kingdoms - All Media Types
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Moment in time, Vignette, ficadayinmay, movie canon only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:16:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1561124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the cusp of a summer storm, Xiao Qiao loses her guest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	deserted terrace of cloud and rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Umbralpilot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umbralpilot/gifts).



The storm mutters far out over the river, dragged eastward by the stiff wind that drives the smothering air as if it were a stubborn team of oxen. It will be a relief to have the heat wave break. Xiao Qiao moves across the household, seeing that her women bring in the wash and the grooms close every latch in the stables. As welcome as the rain and thunder may be, a tempest is a tempest.

After her round is done, only one matter remains for her to attend. With a few inquiries scattered among the servants, she tucks on her hat and cloak and crosses the wide, dusty yard of the keep down to the gatehouse that faces the river. On the roofed terrace there, the allied generals and advisors debated war two winters ago.

Now only the wind rattles lanterns abandoned on their hooks. The gatehouse is home to the birds nesting in the eaves and the guards at their patient watch, but peace brought an end to the bustle of the keep. Descending to the shore, swept clean of ships save for a lone, moored patrol vessel, she finds him.

He stands not on lookout but in contemplation. The fan in his hand rests unmoving against the crook of his elbow. In the weeks he has remained their guest at Red Cliff, Xiao Qiao cannot remember seeing Zhuge Liang so still. The first gust of rain dashes over the docks, whips the surface of the river into a thousand, thousand dancing ripples, and speckles the breadth of the beach.

She grasps her hat and hurries to the waterline on the heels of the rain. When she is three steps away, he turns, easy and smooth, and she cannot quite tell how long he's been aware of her presence.

"Lady Qiao. You've found my hiding place."

"Were you hiding?" She joins in the twinge of humour that echoes in his words. "I did not want to disturb you, but won't you come in? It seems we'll have a proper southern summer storm."

He does not move at once, and his eyes track over the far shore, where fragile green covers the remains of abandoned battlements, fresh growth creeping from the fire-scoured soil. "The storm isn't here yet, but it is about to rain." The fan moves across his sleeve, a gentle tapping movement. "There's something particular to this moment."

"Is there?" She cants her head. "To me it sounds like the last moment to cover the verandas and shut the doors, and make sure every child is underfoot somewhere inside the house."

A slight nod, as if he were testing out his usual lightness of being. "A wise way of looking at it, certainly. I think something about the world changes in the rain." His gaze stays on the distance. "Armies march, but they would prefer to shelter. The fisherman puts out his nets for the catch the rain may bring, and bears the wet for the good it gives. If there is a heartbeat to the world--and there is--then rain is when it slows down for sleep."

"There it is again, the poetry." She laughs. He puts on a fine facade. If this was closer to their first conversation, and if she was more inclined to be sedate and serene rather than overly inquisitive, she would be fooled. However, his silence is of a new sort, a strange quiet like that of remembrance. She must have caught him unguarded: he cannot have meant to let on so. All of this, the wide-open place beyond the somnolent keep, the opposite bank of the great river. He planned to be alone and watch the clouds come down the Yangtze.

Perhaps she should leave him to it.

Instead, Xiao Qiao takes half a step closer. "I always think of my sister in this weather." He turns to her again, a quirked brow opening up his expression. 

She hums, as if acknowledging it for a trifling topic. "I've lived along the river all my life. The beach by my father's house would be filled with puddles after a storm such as this. I would run away to play in the sand, and my sister, of course, would be tasked with bringing me home." She toes the sand, already notched and dark with the incoming rain. The drops are tossed down in whirls and spurts across the river and the village downstream.

"Lady Qiao has a hidden penchant for mischief, then." The rain falls warm, and Zhuge Liang seems unbothered by it, even as it spatters on his head and shoulders. "I truly should have guessed."

"She would carry me back up the hill and scold me the whole way." Xiao Qiao glances down, wondering what made her speak. The quiescence of him is the only answer she can find. Is it solitude, or loneliness?

"That seems the lot of older siblings, no matter where in the land you go."

"So it does." She squares her shoulders. "However that may be, I can't let my guest be soaked, can I? There may still come word from the west, and what would I say to Lord Liu's messenger if his chief strategist fell ill in my house?" And she smiles, smiles her bravest, steadiest smile. She makes it a pleasantry, a gibe, because there is peace on the land and she must believe that it will hold.

Shaking his head, water beading in his hair, he looks out over the river as if there were a mystery written on the sheets of rain, running in flowing calligraphy from the heavens to the waters below.

"Not today," he says, and is still. "Today I would be Zhuge Liang, come from Sleeping Dragon Ridge to Red Cliff to visit a friend or two. If Lady Qiao would indulge me in this."

Her humour fades, but in understanding, not disappointment. "If you must stand in the rain, may I at least bring you a hat? I know it's warm, but it will chill after a while."

"If it is no trouble." He seems almost apologetic.

She tries for lightness again, airy and soft and pliant. "You could even retreat under the eaves and listen to them run with the rain." Then, taking a chance, she continues, "Since there seems to be no other music in the house lately."

His hands shift, covered by his sleeves. "Lady Qiao does not play herself?"

"I studied, but the lessons never quite stuck." She pulls the cloak closer, aware that the cloth is getting heavier with gathering damp. "I prefer the brush or the needle." A pause. "And if you would be Zhuge Liang, then I must be Xiao Qiao. If we are to be friends."

She almost sees him gather himself. It is not a straightforward thing, given how tightly he grips himself at all times and how smoothly he sweeps that control from view: only the slightest change in how he holds himself. The river runs dark with the reflection of the rushing clouds. The rain comes down steady, the sky taking on that hue of hard smoky blue that so pleases her eye but remains impossible to catch in cloth dye or coloured ink.

"I've been told to avail myself of your eaves, and that seems a kindly thing." Again almost imperceptibly, he breaks away from the river, unpins his focus from the shoreline. "Would you share them? Considering the clouds, the lightning must be something to see."

"If you will have a hat," she says, "and perhaps some tea."

He chuckles, and she takes that small sound as a grace. "I confess I but dabble, but would you allow me to make the tea? And we may sit and consider the rain--as musicians, as poets, as friends, as Xiao Qiao wishes."

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from _Tang Shi_ ( _300 Tang Poems_ ), from "Poetic Thoughts on Ancient Sites II" by Du Fu. So yes, from a later period. Please excuse my anachronistic love of this line.
> 
> Thanks, as always, to Umbralpilot, _sine qua non_.
> 
> This story belongs to a longer post-movie verse I'm planning, so I'm hopeful the Fic A Day challenge will bring some more words to the same continuum.


End file.
